updated 12:00 pm EST, Fri March 11, 2011

Analyst has Xoom sales at just 300,000 in Q1

Motorola Xoom sales might peak at just 300,000 devices in its first quarter, Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt said in a research note Friday. Checks saw an average of about two Xooms sold per day at Verizon stores, which led McCourt to the figure. Best Buy wasn't necessarily accounted for and might have added to the total.

So far, Motorola has declined to say how many of its inaugural tablet were moving but has implied that it was content. If accurate, however, the analysis could lead to a very low-key launch for the device, even if it will have only had the Xoom on sale for about five weeks for the quarter ending in March. Apple sold over 300,000 of the original iPad in just its first day and, with the iPad 2, could double that this weekend.

Most have credited hesitance to buy the Xoom to the decision to tie the initial Xoom launch to a 3G/4G Verizon model costing $800, or both more than a similar iPad 2 and $300 more than the starting price. A Atrix 4G. It was selling at much higher rates of three to four per store each day, but this was "disappointing" and redeemed only by Motorola starting almost from scratch in building its reputation on AT&T.

In side commentary on RIM, he didn't see the Verizon iPhone or new Android devices being more than "modestly" hurtful to BlackBerry sales. Sprint may have even had surprise success with the BlackBerry Style, McCourt said: there was reportedly consistent demand and possibly enough that it was trumping Android devices for sales.

channel-stuffing is not the same

Wait, maybe it's a revolving door of RMA and refurbs. People buy them for a few hours and return them. Let's say 3 times per unit, we are looking at just 100,000 units.

Rip a page from L Ron Hubbard Dianetics. (The Church of Scientology bought their own books by the cases and sold by the cases back to Crown Books.) Maybe Motorola should do the same to pump up sales figure.

Hitting the market within 360 days of the initial.

yep

Must be channel stuffing or counting sales and returns and replacements. Of course it must. That's how every company reports sales. Except Apple, of course. Apple is the only company whose sales figures are for what they actually sell.

Apple strengths...

one of Apples strengths as a company is supply management. All analysis is based on the same metric but Apple has a proven record of keeping the inventroy in the supply line quite small. Samsung and Motorola do not have the same reputation so I suspect they tend to have more inventroy, particularly unpopular products, stuck in the supply line.